From Naderi Cafe to Kafka's Soup

07/21/10

With the permission of the anonymous author;
translated by an anonymous Tehrani civilian

payvand.com -- It is three decades now that an abandoned
sculpture of a white angel is locked in the backyard of the Naderi Café which
once upon a time overlooked the great contemporary literary figures of this
country sitting next to its now decaying feet. Apparently, however, decay is not
the fate of only this angel which has been isolated like the spirit of Iranian
contemporary literature for years. The same destructive fate is now looking into
the eyes of the whole Café which was the main meeting place of Iranian
intellectuals in the fifth and sixth decades of the last century.

The path the Naderi Café is going through is the
same path that the closed dictator-oriented society of Iran has determined for
our culture; a drowsy society which has been active for years now in destroying
its history and culture by its surrender to dictatorship or harried choices made
out of excitement.

In this closed society, the result of those
choices and appointments drove some into suicide before the revolution, and led
the bus on which a whole group of writers were traveling, some having spent
their youth in this very café, toward a steep valley after the revolution when
killing was pursued from the beginning not only with the intention of physical
elimination of the intellectuals, but also the exclusion of their literary
presence in an attempt to intensify the deep abyss between them and ordinary
people. Prohibiting the reprint and sale of Forough Farokhzad's poetry and Sadeq
Hedayat's books, as well as the works of many other thinkers were all solid
bases and an important capital for exclusion of the intellectual class from the
social classes.

How
did the society act in regard to such eliminations and destructions? If after
the revolution we wished to take a step toward progressive changes, then why
didn't we show any collective reaction to any of these purging? I remember the
story of a writer in one of the European countries who was locked in a room
under the rooftop of one of the houses overlooking a square of a war-stricken
city during the Second World War. He could see only a lone tree through a small
hole in that room. The tree turned into a symbol for him to endure the extreme
hardship of those days and write his novel.

What did the given society do for those moments
of this writer's life? Did it forget that house and let it decay? Did it let the
House Town destroy the square next to that house to build the underground
station instead? Did it cut that tree just because it was too old and planted a
new tree in its place? Did they stand aside watching them to destroy the whole
of that history first, and then begin to moan, weep and sigh for it?

No, such things do not happen in democratic
societies because people do not see their writers separate from themselves. They
chose his name for that square and cherished that tree. They wrote the story of
that rooftop and everyday the fans of that writer go to that room to look
outside through the same hole which their favorite writer looked through.

There was a café where Kafka had once ordered a
dish of soup. The owner knew the famous Kafka and respectfully and honorably
served him the soup. After eating the soup, Kafka makes the comment: Such a
delicious soup it was! What did the owner do in response? Did he regard Kafka's
appreciation like that of others and forgot what he had heard? Did he just talk
about the memory of that day to a couple of people? Did he put those dishes
among others and forgot on which table Kafka had sat?

No! He knew who had come to his Restaurant and
changed the name of the soup Kafka appreciated to Kafka's soup. He preserved
those plates like a treasure in a cupboard of his restaurant and marked that
table and chair for others to see and remember.

These are long individual steps that each member
of a society can take in order to respect and cherish the culture and art of
their country. A simple task which implies a motivation to bring about a change,
to develop some self-belief in leaving an impression in the society, instead of
slumbering and merely get impressed!

Café Naderi has been put on sale. One approach
regards the cultural inheritance organization as the main culprit, which is true
and there is no doubt about it. However, the function of this organization is
well-known. In general what else can be expected of a state which is years now
that has deliberately been investing in demolishing our historical inheritance?
And it is years now that nothing other than the fetid smell of dampness and
ruins can be sensed from that organization. The other approach repeated
frequently is that the owners are evidently some materialists interested only in
their eight million dollars situated along the Jomhuri (Republic) Street and do
not give a damn to the cultural aspects of their family inheritance. But isn't
such an approach the same as putting the responsibility on other's shoulders in
order to take a sigh of relief out of mere irresponsibility?

In addition, it may induce a better feeling in us
in the sense that by blaming and sabotaging another we confiscate a privilege
for ourselves which might be called self-healing of the sting of conscience. But
shouldn't we ask ourselves what is making an Iranian Armenian family whose
grandfather prepared the most significant cultural haunt of the country for the
great men of letters decide to sell the place? It is ten years now that the
family can not be bothered to even paint that building. Do we ask ourselves how
responsible we regard ourselves toward that Café and the whole history of the
contemporary literary culture which took deep breaths in its air and led hot
debates? What is our share in keeping it alive and how much we have paid for
this share?

This is the real story of the Naderi Café these
days: The present owners of the Naderi Hotel and Café intend to sell this
cultural historical building due to their financial problems. The building is
eighty years old and they have done nothing for its preservation. In 2002 when
the news of the owners' decision to sell the place was first published, the
continuous follow-ups of the media led to its registration by the cultural
inheritance organization a year later. This was an effective step because when a
building is registered by this organization, legally it can no longer be
demolished.

But now seven years after its registration it is
quite evident that the given organization is absolutely indifferent toward
preservation of this building because it has done what it is supposed to do
after registering a building as a cultural inheritance. The Naderi Café is in
the same collapsing state and attempts to sell it are naturally continuing. The
total area of the hotel and café is around three thousand square meters and its
price is estimated to be around eight million dollars.

Let us now have a look at the history of the
Russian immigrant who built this café.

The
Naderi Café was built in 1927 by a Russian immigrant called Khachik Madikians.
It was called Naderi because of its location along the ex-Naderi street now
called Jomhuri. He was the first to open a confectionary in Tehran, also
introducing cultural foods to Iranians for the first time in the Naderi
Restaurant. Later he built a hotel next to the café under the same name. The
Naderi Hotel was the second hotel built in Tehran. The fist was the Grand Hotel.

Even though nothing has remained from the
original architecture of the Naderi Café, but mere sitting in it still induces a
deep feeling of nostalgia. After a fire broke out in the building due to the
negligence of one of the clients whose cigarette fell on a bed because he was
dozing the original traditional building seen in a very few remaining pictures
was totally burnt. The new renovated complex looks more like the rest of
buildings constructed during seventies in Iran.

The Naderi Café and Hotel was completed in 1928
as a recreational complex in a western style, particularly Germans at the same
time when the rail way and the country's banks were under construction. The
complex possessed a confectionary too. As mentioned before there is no trace of
the old architecture of the café which can now only be seen in a few pictures
decorating the walls of its entrance hall way. None of those tile walls arching
on top of the building or the wooden narrow long windows facing the balconies
are not there any more.

The Naderi Café turned into a place of political
and cultural meetings in fifties and sixties, the haunt of many intellectuals
like Sadeq Hedayat, Jalal Al-ahman, Ahmad Fardid, Simin Daneshvar, Nima Yushij
and Forough Farokhzad. It owes its fame as the most nostalgic cultural haunt of
the country largely to the regular visits of such esteemed figures.

The present owners of this complex are the
grandchildren of Khachick Madikians. Despite its present air, looking much
plainer than other restaurants and cafes with low standards of hygiene and
service mainly due to its owners' negligence, it is always full of people who go
there in order to live in history, occupy the chairs on which great Iranian
cultural figures sat and breathe its nostalgic air for half an hour or so.

The worn out utensils, glasses with broken edges
and busted plates are all a part of the history of this café which is still
serving its passionate clients with them. Nothing has changed in it, chairs,
cups and even the spoons and forks are the same old ones. The internal
decoration has not changed. The covering of the tables are in the same off-white
color of fifty or sixty years ago.

These are the main features of the Naderi café.
The waiters have been working there for forty years now, thus the café has
naturally become an inseparable part of their lives. In fact they too have
turned into a part of the history of this cultural environ and each has many
memories of its blooming days and its famous clients.

But lots of things have happened in these years.
The police constantly has kept bothering the owners, creating a new entanglement
for them nearly everyday. First they forbid the use of the backyard where that
white angel is still standing petrified. The same angel who once listened to the
live music played there by an orchestra. The order was issued lest it becomes
the meeting place of young people, stranger to each other. They then said, it
can only be used for smoking. Later they said its door should be kept sealed! In
short, the owners faced the same old questions of women's covering and all other
things which have made this profession - hotel- café- and restaurant- management
- extremely cumbersome in Iran.

The café does not have its old clients any more.
It is collapsing from all angles. It possesses neither its old esteem, nor any
kind of flamboyance; the most is that every now and then a few reporters may
visit the place, ask about its history, write a few lines and leave. Not only
there is no state support, but the real tendency and goal is to eliminate this
living memory of the splendid days of literary intellectualism in Iran from the
face of Tehran. The private section has its own problems and prefers to erect
skyscrapers rather than to invest in restoration of any historical cultural
monument. Well, this is only a small part of the problems and if there is no
inclination to preserve this building it is all because what is said above sucks
the spirit of restoration and preservation of this building from the body of its
owner like a beast.

Now perhaps it would not be a bad idea to talk a
little about "dead cafes" of Iran's intellectualism as well here. As the
contemporary history shows, the fifties and sixties were the blooming decades of
Iranian contemporary art and literature. The Si-Tir Street from the National
museum to the Naderi Street housed several cafés where intellectuals of the
country met. Firouz Café at the beginning of Nobaha'r Street in the Jomhuri
Street was the meeting space of Jalal Al-ahmad and his fans. Today, the building
has been turned into a bank. The Riviera Café was at the beginning of Qavam
Street and the meeting place of intellectual students; it is now a restaurant.
The Laqanteh Café was at the beginning of Ba'b Homa'youn Street, now turned into
a grocery. The Kuchini café, one of the latest was the meeting place of
musicians like Farhad Mehrdad, Farid Zuland and Ardalan Sarafraz. It is now
turned into a wedding hall. The Ferdosi café which was once the haunt of Sadeq
Hedayat, Ahmad Shamlu, Forough Farokhzad and many others does not exist anymore;
with no trace of it remaining.

Today there is only the Naderi Café and Goleh
Reza-ee-yeh Café. Now the fundamental question is whether we are able to behave
in the same way as the owner of that restaurant did with Kafka's soup?